Engineering teams are removing the turbine blade from the plane and plan to ship it to Pratt's engine facility in Middletown, Connecticut, for more thorough evaluation and root cause analysis, according to the Pentagon and Pratt.
If this is to be a competent investigation, USAF should send the ENGINE back to P&W for analytical teardown. I say this because it's possible - maybe likely - that the root cause lies elsewhere in the engine, and the cracked blade is simply the symptom of a upstream fault.
